According to the widely-circulated post shown below, Facebook will donate money to help the pictured child in exchange for liking and sharing.
The post, which features a boy on a hospital bed with an obviously distraught woman – presumably the boy’s mother – looking on. The post claims that, if you like and share the Page that published the picture, Facebook will donate ten rupees to help pay the boy’s treatment costs.
However, the claims in the post are false. The image has been stolen from elsewhere on the Internet. Facebook will not donate money to help this boy. Liking and sharing the picture will do nothing whatsoever to help him or his mother.
In fact, the post is just a scam designed to promote a particular Facebook Page. By launching this fake charity campaign, the owners hope to gather many new likes for their dodgy Facebook Page. Please don’t help these immoral and disgusting people by participating.
If you see the post, don’t like, share or comment as that just helps to spread it further and plays into the hands of the scammers. Instead, inform the person who posted it and ask him or her to delete it.
Sick child charity scams like this have been circulating on Facebook for years. There have been many variations of them. Keep in mind that Facebook will never donate money to help a sick child based on how many times a post is liked or shared. Any post that makes such a claim is certain to be a scam.
It appears that the picture first began circulating back in early 2018 via Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. The original Arabic language posts containing the picture simply asked for prayers for the boy and made no mention of donations in exchange for liking and sharing.
A screenshot of the fake charity post:
Transcript:
If you like and share this page then this boy will get ten rupees from Facebook which will be used to treat him. Please share and like the page. This is a mother’s request, please share it. If you can’t help you can at least share.
Importance Notice
After considerable thought and with an ache in my heart, I have decided that the time has come to close down the Hoax-Slayer website.These days, the site does not generate enough revenue to cover expenses, and I do not have the financial resources to sustain it going forward.
Moreover, I now work long hours in a full-time and physically taxing job, so maintaining and managing the website and publishing new material has become difficult for me.
And finally, after 18 years of writing about scams and hoaxes, I feel that it is time for me to take my fingers off the keyboard and focus on other projects and pastimes.
When I first started Hoax-Slayer, I never dreamed that I would still be working on the project all these years later or that it would become such an important part of my life. It's been a fantastic and engaging experience and one that I will always treasure.
I hope that my work over the years has helped to make the Internet a little safer and thwarted the activities of at least a few scammers and malicious pranksters.
A Big Thank You
I would also like to thank all of those wonderful people who have supported the project by sharing information from the site, contributing examples of scams and hoaxes, offering suggestions, donating funds, or helping behind the scenes.I would especially like to thank David White for his tireless contribution to the Hoax-Slayer Facebook Page over many years. David's support has been invaluable, and I can not thank him enough.
Closing Date
Hoax-Slayer will still be around for a few weeks while I wind things down. The site will go offline on May 31, 2021. While I will not be publishing any new posts, you can still access existing material on the site until the date of closure.Thank you, one and all!
Brett Christensen,
Hoax-Slayer
